Illustration: Lawson Wood Monkey Mania

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.


Here are more great monkey paintings by Lawson Wood. If you missed our previous posts on this great illustrator, see the links at the bottom of this post.











Thanks to Mike Fontanelli and Will Finn for contributing these great vintage illustrations.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Lawson Wood: The Monkey Painter, More Fabulous Monkey Paintings, Wartime Era Colliers, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Casey Strikes Out In Coronet, Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Wartime Colliers Magazine

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.


Thanks to Archive supporters Kent Butterworth and Mike Fontanelli, our database includes many great examples of classic illustration from the pages of the "Rolls Royce" of weekly publications, Colliers magazine. In the past, we've covered mid 30s Colliers illustrations, mid 30s advertisements, and late 40s Colliers illustrations. Today, we turn our attention to a very interesting time in American history, WWII. The war effort permeated everyday life throughout the nation, from the richest person all the way down to the poorest. This magazine reflects that, with feature stories, illustrations and ads that all reflect wartime themes. (For more on WWII, see Walt's War, Wartime Propaganda, Dispatch From Disney's and Artzybasheff's Diablerie.)

At the time this issue was published, circulation for Colliers was nearing 2.5 million readers. By the mid 50s, circulation would rise to 4 million copies, but it wasn't enough to save the magazine. Competition for ad revenues with television spelled doom for many of the big magazines, and Colliers was forced to go biweekly in 1953, ceasing publication altogether in 1957.

At Colliers, the illustrator was king, and many great artists filled its pages over the years, from Charles Dana Gibson, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Szyk and F.X. Leyendecker. For more info on a couple of the incredible illustrators featured in this post, see Lawson Wood, the monkey artist and our article on magazine cartooning with Earl Oliver Hurst. If you'd like to try these techniques out for yourself, see Ink Wash Painting: In Praise of Happy Accidents Part One and Part Two.




















Thanks to Mike Fontanelli for contributing these great vintage magazines to be digitized for the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Lawson Wood: The Monkey Artist, Casey Strikes Out In Coronet, Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mid 1930s Advertisements From Colliers

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.


Here's a batch of advertisements from the mid-1930s Colliers magazines loaned to us for digitization by archive supporter Mike Fontinelli. I don't know about you, but after looking over these great magazines, I have the urge to go out and buy a 1936 Terraplane! For more wonderful illustration from Colliers see the links at the end of this post.














Thanks, Mike!

If you enjoyed this post, see... Wash Painting: In Praise of Happy Accidents Part One and Part Two, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Late 40s Colliers, Lawson Wood: The Monkey Artist, John Held Jr, Coronet Magazine 1945, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: More From The Monkey Man, Lawson Wood

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.



Awhile back, we featured an article on the "Monkey Painter", Lawson Wood. Mike Fontanelli recently brought by a big stack of vintage Colliers magazines with Wood covers for us to scan. Check these babies out!








The other day, I was surfing blogs and I came across a post that popped my eyes on Will Finn's blog, Small Room. It featured scans of a fabulous Wartime era calendar by Wood from Will's collection. I dropped him a note and he generously brought it by for us to scan for the Archive. Here are a few samples...







There are more images from this great calendar in Will's article on Lawson Wood. If you haven't bookmarked Will's page yet, you should. Where else are you going to find inspiration and insight like the stuff on Will Finn's Small Room?

Many thanks to Will Finn and Mike Fontanelli for their generous support of the Archive project.

If you found this post useful, see our first post on... Lawson Wood, The Monkey Painter and our posts on 1940s Colliers Illustration and Colliers From The 30s.

Also see... The Genius Of Miguel Covarrubias, Wartime Propaganda Posters Part One and Part Two, Will Finn's Letter From Ward Kimball, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Arthur Szyk's The New Order / Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

I carefully choose the "Also See" links at the bottom of each post to tip you off to great related stuff that you might have missed. Click on them!

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: 1930s Colliers Illustrations

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


You might remember a post we had here a couple of weeks back on mid-1940s illustrations from Colliers Magazine. Well, here for comparison are some examples from the pages of mid-30s issues. Colliers was the "Rolls Royce" of weekly magazines, with a tremendous circulation. The artists who illustrated the articles and advertisements were highly respected and very highly paid. They were worth every penny- check out those masterful ink wash duotones!

Archive volunteer Gary Francis has been scouring the swap meets for vintage magazines for us to digitize. Keep up the good work, Gary!








(Advertisement by Fontaine Fox, creator of Toonerville Folks.)




(For more great work by cartoonist Gluyas Williams, see David King's gluyaswilliams.com)








If you enjoyed this post, check out... Colliers Magazine From the Mid-1940s and also... John Held Jr.'s Flappers, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Lawson Wood- The Monkey Painter

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.



Lawson Wood is one of the most unusual artists of the golden age of magazine illustration, largely because of the subject he chose to illustrate- monkeys... well, to be scientifically accurate, most of them are apes, but to a cartoonist, a monkey is a monkey.

Wood was born in London in 1878 to a family already well outfitted with artists. He developed his skills swiftly, and by age 18 he was a published illustrator. By the early years of the 20th century, he was established as an artist adept at both "straight" subjects and humorous fantasy. His images of cave men and dinosaurs were particularly popular in England, but the paintings that brought him fame in America were his monkeys...



This album was brought to us to digitize by archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli, and it gives you a good idea of how much Wood got out of his silly subject matter. Wood's Gran'pop Monkey and friends graced the cover of many issues of Colliers, and there was even talk of adapting the characters to star in a series of animated cartoons. Ub Iwerks was slated to produce the series, but the outbreak of war and the closing of Iwerks' studio nipped the idea in the bud. However, Wood understood the value of merchandising early on; he even headed up his own toy manufacturing firm, and he died a very wealthy man in 1957.

Some people can't get past the "kitsch factor" of Wood's illustrations. But even those who hate his work have to grudgingly admit that he had wonderful painting technique. Love him or hate him, here is Lawson Wood...













Many thanks to Mike Fontanelli for his generous support of the Archive project.

If you found this post useful, see also... John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Arthur Szyk's The New Order / Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Kent Donates Colliers

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.



Yesterday, we had a wonderful surprise. Archive supporter Kent Butterworth stopped by lugging eight huge bound volumes under his arm. They were library copies of Colliers magazine from the late 1940s and early 1950s. He donated them to our library so folks who stop by can browse the amazing illustrations and cartoons. Thanks, Kent!

Here are a few images from the June 5th, 1948 issue... Check out the amazing illustrations for mundane products like outboard motors and golf balls! Magazines today can't compare.












You'll want to make a point of stopping by the archive to check these books out.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!